wepple

This is nifty. I noticed a lot of the adafruit LED displays were charlieplexed but never figured to look up what that meant.

NYC subway, today: https://ibb.co/v3rdHcm

Follow up: I just took this photo: https://ibb.co/v3rdHcm

I literally just took this photo right now (2024-05-08) https://ibb.co/v3rdHcm

I think you’ve completely missed the point.

Folks who design products that are trying to protect privacy should do their absolute best to sand down the sharp edges and make them secure-by-default wherever possible.

I would hope so, but is that confirmed?

Is there a clear definition between handing over data they have and being compelled to make modifications in order to intercept?

I wouldn’t call it reasonable.

If you’re trying to evade LE because it’s illegal to be gay in your country, and you get caught because you’d listed an Apple address in your ProtonMail account - can’t we design better products to make this less likely?

When thinking about these types of cases, always keep Parallel Construction in mind: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction

There’s a reasonable chance that they already had this info (possibly even cleartext email via an ISP lawful intercept), and the proton/apple jig whilst bad, wasn’t as bad as the real source

> they do not have the encryption keys.

True, but they can trivially obtain them given they control everything in the browser.

The question then becomes, does the law allow compelling to that degree? Apple fought back in the San Bruno case, but they’re very well lawyered up

> It is up to the user

And therein lies the problem. We on HN may have a few ideas about how to do this, but the typical user of a secure email/VPN/tor unfortunately doesn’t and realistically can’t understand the corner cases and tricks.

Realistically, even HN users would make enough mistakes.

This is why I’m dubious of these types of products marketing to average consumers

There have been a bunch of these, although if you’re really that concerned, you might as well go all in with tor

A modern version of this: https://github.com/grugq/portal

> They've offered ad blocking for years.

Please show me evidence to back this up and I’ll happily walk back my statements.

The “mullvad” browser is not their VPN product. And if you think DNS denylisting prevents “ad networks from spying on you”, I have some unfortunate news for you. It works to prevent the rendering of a subset of ads (especially in the browser), but isn’t worth a damn for actual behavioral analysis.

I’m fairly skeptical too, and only time will tell. FWIW I don’t think highly of Microsoft when it comes to security. But two things that may be positive:

1) there is precedent for Microsoft doing a strong 180 when it comes to security, driven by the original trustworthy computing memo of 2002. We’ll see if Satya means this level or not

2) it looks like they’re being hurt by the most important motivator of all: money. If they don’t tidy up their act fast, govt and industry will come down hard on them. The US is losing the cyber persistence game to China and it’s a national security risk

Edit: precedent/president

I’d love to see an honest blog post from MS after all this effort on what worked and didn’t.

A massive horizontal effort like this is especially challenging after accruing substantial security debt over years

From my above post:

> The NYC subway ads state that they save you from online web ad systems; blatantly false.

From my above post:

> The NYC subway ads state that they save you from online web ad systems; blatantly false.

In combination?

The browser piece is doing almost all of the work against ad networks, isn’t it?

Which part of defense against ad networks does a VPN contribute to?

I’m going to make sure to photograph the NYC subway ads next time I see them

The NYC subway ads

Sorry, not buying it. To claim that you stop online ad networks is a downright falsehood and you know it.

That copy should’ve never made it past basic checks for legitimacy.

Or alternatively: feel free to describe to HN how Mulvad protects users against ad networks.

They’re in it for the money.

They’ve made some claims that are downright lies, I chuckle at the idea anyone would trust them.

The NYC subway ads state that they save you from online web ad systems; blatantly false.

I’ll take a photo next time I see the ad to store away.

Not a single one of these is a valid reason; they all add a distraction round-trip and getting straight to the point achieves the same outcome without the RTT

How did someone “brainless” navigate to a position where they get to party, and if you’re so “brainfull”, why don’t you do the same?

Is there political corruption and abuse that keeps you there?

Yeah, we had a very compact car. Drove my firstborn home from the hospital in it, surrounded by monster vehicles. Then traded it for a (smallish) SUV.

I may wish it weren’t that way, but I’m playing the game.

Additional datapoint: my account just got locked, was forced to change password.

I use a gmail email as my login

Are there known examples of ex-McKinsey employees that are generally considered a force for good in general?

Double-edged sword, because few organizations also have the resources to do security at the scale and depth as a MS/goog/Amz

I’d imagine that these proclamations are part of the negotiation.

I wouldn’t want to be a Microsoft account executive on the US govt contract right now; they’re about to have a massive load of additional requirements.

And if they don’t play ball, possibly antitrust to weaken their stranglehold on being the only real enterprise player.

I’m not saying any of this is the right approach, but it’s a tool in the governments toolbox.

What is an “angry state” - the people? The politics? …?

I’m saying if you have a collection of humanoids and general purpose tooling, you can adapt much faster.

I don’t literally mean retool a conventional production line in one night